We admit that we have been struggling lately with a declining left side. We have a problem with writing about personal health issues – the outpouring of kind and encouraging comments, email and other forms of sympathy (flowers and home-made meals left on the porch, donations to cancer research made in our name) can be overwhelming.

It’s not that we don’t appreciate the kindness and encouragement – we truly do, and it has surely helped us weather some very dark days. But the object of this exercise is to deal with my current circumstances by writing about them – and not an excuse to invoke sympathy. Please read this if you wish, but please don’t feel compelled to respond, that’s not the point.

I have long wanted to write an inside-out view of hemiplegia, both as therapy for me and in the hope that some of my experience – particularly successes in overcoming some of the difficulties through rehab – might prove useful for others facing this difficult condition. But that was before the current decline (which doesn’t seem to be caused by my tumor, but by the adjacent area of ‘flair,’ which is basically swollen tissue) When I was improving by the week, it was easy to contemplate writing about the condition Now that things seem to be headed the other way, it’s a bit more difficult.

Anyway, I’ve just started writing the hemiplegia piece, now, a kind of companion to the article I wrote on glioma which is the root cause of my hemiplegia. My schedule just at the moment is very full, and blocks of writing time are a bit hard to come by – my goal is to peck away at this for the next week or two.

Again, let me state that, while this is a bit of a setback, my doctors are of the opinion that this is an unfortunate, but not ultimately serious development. Onward…

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